Why some newspapers are toast, but mass customization is ready for Prime Time to save the day!

I followed some links starting at newsless.org and got to Transforming American Newspapers @digital deliverance. The 2 part essay, written in 2008 is the most useful thought model I've yet found to understand the fundamental "newspaper" problem. It is most definitely worth investing the time to read it.

Turns out is not the internet, nor Web 2.0 or lots of other things that buzz around the blabla-o-sphere.

The real problem is a one size fits all Print technology. As the technology is now coming to market to allow micro-versioning and appropriate size print runs for appropriate communities, the rules change. Newspapers are about manufacturing. Mass customization has become a way of doing business for other manufacturers. The most recent Print technology brings mass customization to newspaper manufacturing.

Print technology is the driver

"Start in the European city of Strasbourg during 1605 when the world's first newspaper began publication. It used a technology developed there 164 years earlier by the metalworker Johannes Gutenberg, who had invented a device for producing innumerable copies of the same text. (Please keep that concept in mind, because it's now moldering the newspaper industry)."